SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 Review

JigSaw writes "Despite news about SCO being all about the lawsuit, they still sell OS products and they have a presence in the server market. UnixWare is one of these OS products. Tony Bourke reviewed its latest version, 7.1.3, and even includes benchmarks among other tests. Tony concludes that 'the lack of commercial applications and user community, the difficulty with open source applications, the SCO litigation, and the high price are all marks against UnixWare. There are just very few reasons to adopt UnixWare as your platform, and plenty of reasons to adopt (or migrate to) other platforms.'"

Unfortunate that the test system wasn't newer

It would be interesting to see the degree to which UnixWare copes with recent hardware: HyperThreading P4's, nForce2 chipsets, IEEE 1394, SATA RAID, etc etc etc.

wtf???

What in the hell are you talking about? "Linux barely supports most of that stuff" Linux fully supports *ALL* of that stuff. Has for a long time now. Keep your mouth shut if you don't know what you're talking about.

Re:wtf???

It supports SATA and IDE RAID, but the drivers aren't there for a lot of controllers. You could say that's hardly support at all, but by that logic you could also say because Linux doesn't support Brand X video card, Linux doesn't support graphics.

There's a difference between driver support and feature support. Linux supports these features. Drivers, as usual, depend on vendor specs, vendor support, and ease of reverse-engineering.

Re:wtf???

We're not talking about desktop users here. For the people that may want to use either UnixWare or Linux, Linux supports those features while UnixWare does not. Less sophisticated users should stay far, far from either Linux or UnixWare, "The Unix That Crashes (TM)". Scaring up a custom kernel is not exactly rocket science.

Re:wtf???

Actually, Linux support for NForce2 is not very good - there are bugs in the chipset, or workarounds in the Windows drivers that the kernel developers are still working on.

SATA support is also pretty poor - several popular controllers either dont work, work at about half the speed in linux as they do under Windows, or won't work with software RAID-1 etc.

Have a look at recent postings to the Linux Kernel mailing list to see the nightmare that an NForce2-based board, or a SATA controller will give you under Linux.

I have both, and while I have got them to work, I had frequent hard lockups before i disabled all the ACPI/APIC stuff, my SATA controller doesn't work with software RAID-1 and 2.4 kernels gave me disk corruption and hard lockups under load.

However, The kernel developers are working on these issues, and with their help I was able to get my system up and running. I am confident that this stuff will be fully supported and stable under Linux, but unfortunately this is not the case today.

Re:Unfortunate that the test system wasn't newer

Application vendors are dropping support for SCO right and left, so really, the level of hardware support is irrelevant.

I find it hard to believe that any company that has made the dire mistake of tying themselves so closely to SCO as a platform would not be actively investigating any possible option to remove themselves from any involvement at all with a clearly doomed company.

Their product is worthless, and their user base is so miniscule as to make it counter productive to expend the cash required to qualify product against SCO.

And the more that happens, the worse it will get for those who persist.

What good is an OS distribution when no one makes applications for it anymore, and those that did DROP support for it completely, because it's cheaper to lose a miniscule number of customers than to spend time and money supporting the OS they use?

Re:Unfortunate that the test system wasn't newer

That's easy to say, but if you have critical infrastructure built around SCO it's not like you can just wake up one day and say "Hmmm, this doesn't look good, how about we abandon all those production servers and build something completely different." In business, things that work and are supported don't get touched without good reason, especially if megabucks have been spent getting to that point. It doesn't matter if SCO doesn't have shit for features or doesn't support the latest doodads. It's in production in a number of places and you can't just yank the rug out from under a business like that.

It's one thing to denounce SCO for being the assholes that they are, but it's another completely different thing to actually move away from something that critical without a LOT of planning and testing. Sure, you get started on that as soon as possible, but it takes time. YOu can't just say "SCO's irrelevant now" because to some businesses, it's very relevant -- for better or worse.

Re:Wake up one day?

I'm not saying that it represents necessarily good decision making on the part of those companies... But I'm just pointing out that it's all too common to have some random server running some random application (that's probably itself very old) that's crutial to the business. Nobody in the company has ever tried it with any other platform, nobody knows if it would work, no one knows how long it would take to switch formats or port the app, nobody knows how long it would be down while all this is going on, etc. When you have a situation like this that's crutial to the business functions of the company and it's working and supported, it's going to be an uphill battle to convince anyone to change, ESPECIALLY to commodity and/or "community supported" stuff.

Please, don't take this as me trying to justify SCO's crapware in any respect. I'm just trying to point out that if you spend a lot of time in open source circles it's very easy to get this skewed version of things in which it's inexplicable why any company wouldn't have burned every last piece of SCO media and torn up every support contract after months of this lawsuit garbage and years of crappy software that's going nowhere. You'll find that businesses often have tons of random legacy junk sitting around that's still useful, and to keep it running it makes more sense from a business standpoint to keep paying SCO for support contracts or upgrades, regardless of the merits of SCO's software. SCO knows this, and they have to play into it if they want to survive... (Or at least, a semi-sane SCO before all this lawsuit crap. Now they've pretty much made it impossible to survive post-lawsuit.)

It's kind of like the tale ('Signs'?) where the car runs over the man and pins him against a tree or wall or something, holding his innards in place. You know that his game is up sooner or later but you also know that moving the car is going to make a huge mess with his guts oozing out everywhere...so it's best to just keep things as they are for as long as possible until at least the EMT arrives and he has a slight chance of surviving.

surprise surprise

If you thought /. would say UnixWare rocks the shit out of other Linux distros, then your need surgery... fast.

Re:surprise surprise

>> Linux is only "better" because of broader app & hardware support.

Uh... isn't that the same reason all the Microsoft zealots use for saying Windows is better?

Re:surprise surprise

Unixware is basically the same thing as Solaris.
>>>>>>>>>>>
No, it isn't. They're both derived from SVR4, but all the performance insanity that Sun put into Solaris went in *after* the split.

Surprise surprise yourself...

UnixWare isn't a Linux distro.

Does UnixWare also have the student discount of

ONE BILLION DOLLARS MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH?

Disclaimer: Prices may vary. Check your local retailer. Senseless litigation available in most locations. All rights reserved or acquired in court against your will.

it was an objective review

I thought the author did fairly well at remaining objective and testing the product without allowing company ethics cloud his review

I am NOSTRADAMUS

I predict that somebody'll get modded up for explaining why SCO's distro sucks.

Re:I am NOSTRADAMUS

SCO UnixWare sucks because it's from SCO.

Can I have my karma now?

Re:I am NOSTRADAMUS

Yeah, but unfortantely, funny mod ratings don't affect your Karma --

Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass.

.

This comes from the /. FAQ.

Re:I am NOSTRADAMUS

"Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass. "

Pretty lame if you ask me. The FAQ suggests being funny if ya can. Everybody appreciates it when you succeed. Truth be told, we're not all experts in every topic that comes around on Slashdot, so why not reward us for the effort?

Yep, this is off-topic, and I won't whine if it's modded that way. But I do hope that the upper staff at Slashdot will reconsider this rule. I [slashdot.org] do [slashdot.org] put [slashdot.org] effort [slashdot.org] into [slashdot.org] my [slashdot.org] +5 Funny [slashdot.org] comments [slashdot.org].

Expensive and sparsely featured...

Why would anyone choose it over Linux of FreeBSD is over me.

A prediction...

I think their UNIX business will get spun off after the lawsuit business clears up and the company goes bust. The Unixware product will no longer be marketable under the "SCO" name, since the brand will be indelibly tarnished in the IT world as part of a hostile, litigious organization that tried to extort money from companies, big and small, for work that they had no rights to, and for what essentially amounts to a massive pump-n-dump scheme.

Re:A prediction...

The only SCO systems I've heard of in memory are POS systems. No, not Piece Of Shit, Point Of Sale.

In your local Round Table Pizza, for example, long after everyone goes home for the night they might have a small computer that gathers receipt information from all the cash registers, makes a 14.4K modem call to a "mainframe" at headquarters, and uploads the sales data for that day. Every time on /. when someone admits to using SCO and mentions what the deployment was, it's cash registers.

Anyway. The point is that their brand getting tarnished is completely meaningless to this market. If they do what they say they'll do, Round Table will use them until some sales guy for some competitor (in point of sale systems) convinces them that they're wasting money.

Yes, it would be a good idea for them to spin off their actual products from their tort company, but not 'cause of their name.

Re:A prediction...

Actually, most businesses tend to use IBM's 4690 POS network. The IBM OS runs a DOS-like CLI, with most applications being menu-based at the console. Touch screen terminals then interface with the server using the X-server protocol. A number of businesses use an application called InfoGenesis.

Since most cash registers you see are actually IBM terminals, businesses tend to buy their servers from IBM to get support for both the terminal AND the server.

Re:A prediction...

Then maybe we should help Linux-POS

http://www.linux-pos.org/

And kill what's left of SCO's market.

-1 FB

It didn't tarnish the MS name, now did it? (I know, it's just a joke, mod me down though. They spend way more time getting sued that suing anyways).

Spun Where?

There's no market for this thing. If you've got technical issues that keep you from using Linux or BSD, you're probably also looking for a fancy processor, such as SPARC, not a "commodity processor". And running on x86 is the only serious advantage Unixware has over other "real" Unixes. So Unixware is semi-abandonware, like WordPerfect or 1-2-3. There will always be people who insist on such products, but not enough to sustain a serious busines. UnixWare's only remaining commercial value is as a basis for litigation.

Re:A prediction...

"The Unixware product will no longer be marketable under the "SCO" name..."
Which will probably "confuse the build scripts" even more.

look out below

Daryl,

scorch the earth and your tree may not grow

30 days till you show us what kind of proof you really have .... tick tock ..

SCO ? who uses it?

Does anyone know of any organizations that actually use SCO Unix?

Re:SCO ? who uses it?

McDonalds, last I knew, had thousands of terminals running SCO in their locations. Retail is their biggest presence. I also used to work somewhere (a non-profit) that had an old Informix database running on an even older SCO box.

Not that I support it or anything... =]

Re:SCO ? who uses it?

Does anyone know of any organizations that actually use SCO Unix?

Which SCO Unix? There are basically two, UnixWare being the subject of the post. The other is left as an exercise for the reader.

I know of a injection molding facility that monitors about 50 multi-million dollar presses 24x7 with UnixWare. It runs a vertical app that does alerting (voice announcement, paging, calls) and gathers stats.

UnixWare was an early (first?) commercial implementation of UNIX on i386 hardware. A lot of geeks were pretty excited by it long ago. This mattered because it meant that you could deploy UNIX apps cheaply. So, a lot of vertical apps were ported and UnixWare became pretty widespread. It was a fairly plain-jane port of UNIX with credible-enough vendor support to make it possible to sell products based on it without having customers retch on your shoes. It was an easy port from other UNIX platforms, and this was probably it's main claim to fame. The other being almost-workable integration with Netware fileservers (after Novell acquired it.) I am amused when I remember how it seemed pretty obvious to me that whoever was responsible for that Novell integration piece was learning UNIX in the process.

Just because SCO owns UnixWare doesn't make UnixWare bad. It's largely obsolete now, but 10 years ago if you wanted to run UNIX on i386 hardware, UnixWare (or whatever it might have been called in late 1993) was a good choice. There are products running happily on UnixWare today, their users utterly unaware of the legal hoopla.

Hrmm

I heard SCO were going to find out who the makers of unixware are, and sue them for copyright and patent infrindgements. Then refuse to release documents to themselves, quote incorrect code segments and send bills to themselves.

SVR4 based unix.

SCO OS is based on the same code as SUN OS.

As slashdot has reported a few days ago, Sun is giving x86 versions of Solaris away for free. Why bother with SCO when you can get Solaris with a much bigger set of applcations for free?

Re:SVR4 based unix.

Well, not quite. Solaris incorporated a large chunk of BSD in their codebase. So Solaris is a mix of SystemV and BSD code. (That's why so many solaris admins are also BSD fans).

Re:SVR4 based unix.

Solaris for x86 is free for non-commercial single processor PC's - this was in the detail that /. reported.

The Unixware test here is on a multi(2) processor PC, aside from the fact that "Despite using a dual-processor system, SMP support is a licensed feature, so this installation only recognized one of the two processors."

Other posters have pointed out that Unixware is used heavily in commercial situations - notably retail. - your "free" Solaris is not for this.

Despite all of the above , I have to agree when you ask "Why bother with SCO".

Watch out, Tony...

Attn: Tony Bourke

Read your review. Hope you enjoy court and jailtime, because I'm about to sue you into oblivion. Next time you'll know whose side you should be on. Best of luck to you and your lawyers (or lack thereof)!

Your friend,
Darl

This may hurt them the most...

Of all the bad PR that they've generated for themselves, a bad product may hurt them the most. Now, they open themselves up to the counter-attack that they're an untalented software company looking for a quick buck, with the product being proof of their lack of talent. It's an oversimplification, sure, but one they pretty richly deserve.

haha pawnzor!

ive actually found 2 different boxes containing SCO unixware, in pawnshops. Ugly blue and yellow box, would not buy. $30au or roughly $20us.

UNIXWare is dying!!

Wait, this might be the first "$X is dying" troll that's actually true.

expensive crap

Unixware proves that sometimes, (an increasingly small number of) people buy things based on price alone. There is no reason to use such an expensive, restrictive OS when the makers of that OS have to use ideas from their biggest competitor to improve it, when that competitor is a free (in all meanings) OS.

Let's not get into the specific advantages, because nobody has that large an attention span.

Re:expensive crap

"There is no reason to use such an expensive, restrictive OS..."
It's only $100 more than Linux...

Anyone else find this funny?

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=sco.com

Why?

First off, why is such a worthless OS front page news on /.? SCO Unix is mediocre, and nobody would even think of using it. The only reason a SCO Unix review is on /. is because of the lawsuit hubbub.

I was poking through the SCO web site some time ago, to find good stuff for my SCO Report website [scolicense.com] and I discover SCObiz [sco.com]. Check it out. For $5,000 [sco.com], they'll basically give you a template site, with mediocre ecommerce ability. The datasheet is here (pdf) [sco.com], while the quick facts (pdf) [sco.com] is here. A Flash tour is here [sco.com].

The Flash tour is pretty snappy, but you can tell, it's nothing more than a glorified template driven website builder for newbies, similar to what Tripod [lycos.com] and Geocities [yahoo.com] provide with their drag and drop stuff. It's probably even worse.

Remember to visit SCO Report [scofiles.com], where I do my part to annoy SCO with the truth, and SCO Countdown [scocountdown.com], where there are clocks counting down to SCO's demise...

I have an idea.

They should change the name to UnixWhere.

Re:I have an idea.

I will not use SCO's Unixware
I will not use it here nor there

I will not put in on my x86
I will not use it, I'm not Darl's B*tch

I will not use it use Darl's UnixWare
I don't like SCO, I really don't care

Hmmm, a link to Microsoft?

x tcsh-6.12.00/win32/stdio.c, 15774 bytes, 31 tape blocks UX:tar: WARNING: Cannot get passwd information for christos UX:tar: WARNING: tcsh-6.12.00/win32/stdio.c: owner not changed

Win32 on a Unix machine?

Re:Hmmm, a link to Microsoft?

He is untarring the tcsh distribution so he could compile it. tcsh includes support for Windows.

Very Intresting...

Well, it was intresting read, but some of those tiny fonts are kind of hard on these tired eyes. It wasn't entirely humorless - "...there are several advantages to using vxfs, primarily speed and fscking issues." The big issue to me was...uh, oh, now I get it.

As a UNIX developer...

I have had issues with SCO UnixWare over the years. Particularly, autoconf and automake scripts that worked for every other platform ranging from Linux, *BSD, Solaris to even Windows just failed to work under SCO's UNIX. And I used to want to try and fix these problems, but now SCO has fscked themselves so they can go to hell for all I care.

Re:As a UNIX developer...

Those autoscripts may even detect a SCO product and refuse to compile. nmap's author does this deliberately and by now other projects may do so as well. Other projects will probably not merge fixes for SCO problems unless they are general enough to be a benefit for other platforms.

Some will say this tarnishes FOSS ideals. Helllllooooo! SCO wants to kill FOSS and unilateral disarmament is foolish. I'm in favor of any ethical way of isolating SCO and it's users. If the users find this inconvienient, they can pressure SCO to mend fences.

FreeBSD, baby!

Show me an OS whose proverbial Casbah isn't rocked by FreeBSD. Anyone who would buy a SCO product at this point seriously needs to seek help. There's no reason for anyone to do that to themselves, no matter how bad they feel inside.

can I get a liscense with that?

I bought a copy of SCO UnixWare in the pre Darl days. Back in that day, you could get free 'educational' licenses for nonprofit uses. Too bad they don't offer free 'linux' licenses for schools & colleges. Yeah I guess, they 'changed there minds'. UnixWare 7 wasn't a bad OS, but I believe the review was on target when he said the technology it's based on is past its prime. And you gotta love how you need a license for everything from SMP to critical security updates.

SCO has a "skunkware" download site...

How appropriate.

What's that sound I hear?

I hear a rather large woman singing an aria...

Always Remember

You can't spell fiasco without SCO

1 MILLION SHEETS OF PAPER

SCO is claiming they have fullfilled their legal obligations ahead of the 30 day deadline by delivering 1 million sheets of paper to IBM. http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5114689.html

SCO product review on slashdot!

so this is what Saddam's trial will be like...

Summary

For those of you too lazy to RTFA,

Installed UnixWare.
Common shells not installed automatically.
Tar has issues.
CDE barebones.
Software selection bad.
Has non GCC C compiler.
Does not have C++ compiler.
Cannot port many applications.
LKP pretty.
Did not really test security.
Don't bother asking for community help.
UnixWare fricken' expensive.
No plans for 64-bit.
In conclusion, UnixWare is dying.

Great review; good points.

The article was well-written and, I felt, fairly objective. My thanks to Mr. Bourke for keeping a level head when many are screaming bloody blue murder. For those who just want the meat, here it is:

• UnixWare costs more than other commercial Unix systems.
• UnixWare is not as up-to-date as most other commercial Unix systems.
• There is a dearth of commercial and enterprise apps for UnixWare.
• There is a virtual vacuum where a user-base ought to be.
• The litigation. 'Nuff said.

These factors precluded the reviewer from really thinking of a single situation in which he could recommend UnixWare 7.1.3 as an installable option.

Darl in Top 25?

SCO.com is claiming Darl was listed as one of the Top 25 execs in CRN magazine. I have a subscription to CRN and he dosen't appear anywhere in the Top 25. Can anybody back me up?

Interesting how much cheaper Solaris is

It's interesting how the prices compare:

CPUs UnixWare Ent-Linux Solaris-9-x86
1 $799-$1,399 $349-$449 $99-$250
2 $2,299.00 $349-$449 $250.00
4 $4,999.00 $749-$1499 $1,500.00
8 $9,999.00 $749-$1499 na

Enterprise Linux doesn't seem to offer an advantage unless you're using four or more processors. Solaris (and, Java Desktop, I assume) seems to be a better deal for regular workstations or servers... I imagine that only high-end servers and "mainframes" seem to benefit from the price. No wonder Red Hat doesn't see a future for desktop Linux... they're prices are too expensive!

Benchmarks?

The only benchmarks run were comparing OpenSSL computation in native UnixWare mode versus Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) mode. This is an extremely poor test and shows that the reviewer doesn't know what he's talking about.

LKP is basicly system call emulation like that which is available in FreeBSD. This has NOTHING to do with pure user-space number crunching required of crypto computations! This kind of test would only show the most eggregrarious scheduling or interrupt handler errors in providing the LKP functionality. This wouldn't (shouldn't?) even show up any compiler differences between UnixWare's cc and GCC since OpenSSL is heavily assembly optimzed on x86.

These numbers arn't even compared to running under a real Linux kernel, which would be the most logical course of action given the reviewer's incomplete understanding.

But regardless, with comments like the following, it becomes painfully obvious the reviewer knows little about this:

The Linux kernel version number piqued my interest, because of the recent kernel vulnerability responsible for the compromise of some Debian project servers. I'm not sure if the same kernel exploit would work in the LKP, but it'd be an interesting test.

If anything, benchmarking system calls should have been done. Something along the lines of these tests [bulk.fefe.de].

The reviewer makes his bias very plain with passages such as:

I want to be as objective as possible, but I'd be a fool to think such a review could possibly avoid the controversy and raw emotions surrounding the company offering the product I've chosen to evaluate.

This combined with the lack of objective and useful benchmarks makes this article little more than a piece of cheerleading propoganda.

-molo

SCO software is used... *A LOT*

SCO software (OpenServer and UnixWare) is used mainly in vertical applications.

There are two companies that I know of that sell to a vertical market: the building materials industry.

Each company had two platforms: AIX and SCO. At first the SCO option was OpenServer, but then switched to UnixWare (mainly due to hype from SCO that NEVER materialzed... OpenServer and UnixWare were going to MERGE... but never happened)

Anyway, both companies are looking at AIX and RedHat Enterprise as their two platforms. Until they can test/train on RHEL, they are still selling Unixware. I even had a rep from both companies RECOMMEND Unixware now and will switch the company within 6 months to RedHat. Un-frickin-believable!

Anyway, get off the high-horse ./ There is a lot of time/money to get the solution operation/stable. It will take alot to get it tested/supported on RHEL.

SCO is used. It is still being sold. It will get replaced. But, the timeline is a little longer.

Like it or not... but, that's the case.

When I was a boy...

When I was a boy, back during the days of Linux Kernel 1.0, we emulated SCO to run commercial applications. Now, SCO emulates *us* to run commercial apps. Total world domination, anyone?

WebMD

WebMD aquired a company called "Medical Manager" a while back. Medical Manager [medicalmanager.com] is an application that a lot of Physician Practices use to do scheduling and billing. When I say a lot, I mean like 75% of them, last I checked. Anyway, Medical Manager is usually sold on SCO boxes, as that's what it was originally developed on. The other choices are AIX, HPUX, and NT (though I've never heard of someone running it on NT) but most physician practices don't go that route based on cost alone.

So yes, lots of people still use SCO... in fact, odds are your family doctor does.

Linux Kernel Personality

Isn't the LKP rumored to have a lot of GPL software in it?

SCO's Ripped-off code from Linux?

Hmmm, if the LKP works so well, couldn't it be possible they ripped off code from the Linux kernel at some point?? Is anyone verifying this?

Geek slang has messed with my brain

So when the article says, "...there are several advantages to using vxfs, primarily speed and fscking issues," my immediate reaction was, "Gee, there's no need to be vulgar." (Or words to that effect.) The correct interpretation registered half a beat later, but by then the damage had been done.

At least he didn't say, "fscking speed issues." Or "speed fscking issues," which sounds as if someone's trying to raise blisters.

hmm

I've used sco unixware before.
and I can back this guy, it does suck. not out of bias.. it just lacks a lot of things, and has a very slow boot.

I installed slack on one of the computer repair machines at school (which had unixware on it) and ran another machine with unixware on it and had them boot side by side...

slackware won. and it was on the slower machine.

it's old, and maybe this is what all the crap is about. sco wants linux since they know they cant create anything better than 30 year old code that they never created. (in other words...)

so, they figure they can buy linux out, but what's this? linux cant be bought out. but wait, it looks like unix, they can try to pull an infringement case! but wait, no evidence! ok, so maybe court trials wont work that way, but litigation will scare people into submitting into their whims, but no, it makes people angry... and so on..

truly, I fear to see what's going on in darl's head. I wonder if he was that special needs child that got 4-square balls thrown at him by other children.

that or life in utah (or wherever he's from) warped him.

who knows.. I'm rambling now because I'm half awake.

Swedish Army

Last time I served in it, the Armed Forces of Sweden [www.mil.se] were still running SCO Unix for a lot of communications control computers. The systems were very buggy and would often crash. When I left they were just starting to migrate over to (customized) FreeBSD boxes and Windows NT. Now, knowing the Swedish army, I know they are NOT an organization that changes it ways unless it desperately has to (despite what their PR keeps saying). So if they're dropping SCO .. well .. I used their old systems myself, so I know pretty well how much they suck. It's all over for SCO. When all the legal bullshit is done and over with, there'll be nothing but bones left, and maybe the world will be rid of the horror that is UnixWare.

die SCO die

Death to the Pointy Haired SCO CEO!!!!

More fair than I would write.

Hats off to you. You did not just say SCO sucks, I would have.

SCO sues Saddam Hussein for copyright infringement

On the lawsuit front, SCO has sued Saddam Hussein for copyright infringement.

"UNIX beard is clearly part of UNIX methods and concepts", claims SCO lawyer David Boies. UNIX beard has long tradition among UNIX kernel developers. It demonstrates authority in enterprise software development. We therefore claim that Saddam has violated our copyrights on UNIX methods and concepts, and demand that SCO UnixWare will be the sole operating system in rebuilt Iraq."

X11R5?

Didn't X11R6 come out in 1994?

SCO will spin this too.

SCO's view of the world is so firmly embedded in fantasy land that I'm sure they'll decide this article is actually a ringing endorsement. Witness this [yahoo.com] bit of self-congratulation about how they are recognized for "excellence in operating systems." Then compare that to the original article [channelsupersearch.com] and see if you see the same thing SCO sees. Typically, I wouldn't think phrases like "train wreck" work out to high praise.

I wonder what color the sky is in Darl's world.

Shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka...

I can see where the reviewer was coming from.

The fact of the matter is that SCO has probably managed to put itself out of business with their litigation. Microsoft can get away with a very poor reputation, but that's because they control most of the home PC market - most people use MS more out of having maximum compatibility than anything else.

SCO isn't nearly as lucky. And, by going after their own customers and threatening their potential customers, they have created an environment for themselves where it doesn't matter if they create an uber-prodcut - nobody new will do buy their products, and their existing customers are probably looking for ways to migrate away.

Essentially, they've shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka - this may be remembered as one of the poorest business decisions in history.

Stupid Legal Tricks

Anyone want to lend Linus a couple of lawyers so he can sue SCO for tarnishing his trademark? A C&D preventing SCO from mentioning Linux in their press releases might put a hitch in Darls giddyup.

Re:Who cares???

A bleep? What the fuck is that?

Re:Tony Bourke?

No, you're think of Ray Bourke [bostonbruins.com].

Re:Tony Bourke?

Is he the same guy who wrote the bourke shell?

No, you're thinking of the Icelandic diva and prolific shell coder, Bjork.

Who cares???

Seriously, who gives a bleep about SCO OS???

Re:McDonald's uses SCO

Shouldn't that be Millions and Millions Screwed?

Re:whynot..

You are missing the great beginnings of the GNU movement and why RMS did this all to begin with. Back before Linux hit the scene, the GCC compiler was basically designed to run on hostile systems. A university, for instance, might get fed up with outrageous licensing fees every year and not licencse c++, pascal, fortran, (insert expensive developer license here). Using your proprietary UNIX cc compiler you could bootstrap GCC and make a heck of a fine development platform for cheap! Then you could let your license expire and keep using the system for years to come! Back in those days it was an attempt to for cash starved university research labs to get out from under AT&T's heavy-handed licensing schemes. Man I used to dream of running UNIX at home but it was totally out of the reach of a typical home computer enthusiast, it might as well have cost a million-dollars because nobody that I knew could afford anything like that. Apple's A/UX or maybe Xenix on a TRS-80 were the closest you could come and that was still beyond the reach of most home computer hobbyists. Later on, I think OS/9 on a Tandy CoCo was doable but that was some pretty obscure stuff. Anyways, removing GCC support from SCO would be hurting the people that it is designed to help the most. Yeah SCO is abusing it, probably illegally, but its a situation where you have to tolerate the abuse in order get the help where its needed the most. That being said, anybody that is still running SCO should be taken out behind the barn and you know what, screw 'em I say. There comes a time when you can only take so much crap before you have to pack up your toys and go home.